MIT for the day

02-26-2012, 05:21 AM

I wantvto feel satisfaction after the long work day. When cracking next actions it's very easy to feel overwhelmed not satisfied I found a concept of MIT - Most Important Task for the day. It is suggested to set three MITs for the day. I wonder how to correlate MIT to GTD if possible. Is it NA or Project? If that's NA then it would be very easy and fast (make three calls and you're done). If projects then too hard - some of them could take a year to complete.

Seems to me that the MIT's would be next actions. I don't see anything wrong with "very easy and fast" if those are truly the most important things you have to do that day. What a great feeling that would be!

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For me the MIT would in many cases be a project. Not that I expect to complete the project during just one work day, but making significant progress can also make me feel more sure about having accomplished something important during the day.

Of course in some cases an MIT is a next action, which may or may not make it easier to get to done.

That said, I don't generally write down exactly three MITs, but having at least one make enough of a difference for me.

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For me the MIT would in many cases be a project. [...] That said, I don't generally write down exactly three MITs, but having at least one make enough of a difference for me.

This is exactly my experience too. In fact I have written her on this forums several times throughout the years that my single "expansion" to vanilla GTD is having a MIP, a Most Important Project, and that I make it a rule to work on it for a big part of my working day.

The original MIT concept was introduced to make sure you use the workday to further your goals instead of dealing with the latest and loudest all day. The underlying assumptions were that real productivity is working on what in GTD-speak would be most important by measure of 50k-level priorities and the other was that when you constantly are just rushing to put out fires your productivity is sum negative because the now neglected important tasks are the fires from tomorrow.

Others used the term MIT in rather out-of-context if not to say senseless ways to market blogs and ebooks. So now you have people blogging about GTD without having read the book spreading the MIT word without understanding it neither.

In GTD terms a shortlist of 1-3 MITs would be "day-specific information" in your "calendar". If you don't get them done, so what? If you don't get them done regularly you will notice it during the Weekly Review (which is an awesome habit to develop) and can then think about what you have to change (with your actions, not with your system).

I wantvto feel satisfaction after the long work day. When cracking next actions it's very easy to feel overwhelmed not satisfied I found a concept of MIT - Most Important Task for the day. It is suggested to set three MITs for the day. I wonder how to correlate MIT to GTD if possible. Is it NA or Project? If that's NA then it would be very easy and fast (make three calls and you're done). If projects then too hard - some of them could take a year to complete.

Listen to the "In Conversation with Louis Kim" podcast. Here is my comment after listening:

Originally posted by TesTeq

I've finally listened to "In Conversation with Louis Kim" and found it very insightful.

But there's something more. David shares his tactical advice and says that:

There's nothing wrong with daily Most Important Tasks list!

He sees it as yet another filter for all @context Next Action lists - a filter that allows people to focus on most important Projects. Some GTDers use 3x5 cards to create daily lists containing 1-3 MITs. They look at all their lists a night before or in the morning and ask a question:

"If I have any time today what is the one thing (or 2 or 3 things) out of all of these that I want to get done?"

In the same manner David himself creates the "Before Trip" list to make sure that the critical stuff is done before he leaves.

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My 2 cnt. Read with caution, this is just IMO, I have no deeper knowledge, and MIT is kind of new concept to me. Below is two cases that how I might work. If I'd use MIT, I'd probably do as case 1. For me, MIT would be next actions.

Case 1: Decide 3 MIT per context, And when you are in context, do those first. After done with then, consider changing context to do other MIT if appropriate, or continue with list doing normal next actions.

Case 2: Decide 3 MIT. At the beginning of day, do those three actions, in most appropriate order, changing context as needed. After MITs are done, continue doing next actions from current context.

Anyway, doing would not stop when MITs are done.

Generally I get the satisfaction when I mark actions done, after doing them. Anyway, very much of my doing actually don't come from my next actions lists. Doing work as it appears often is the most important thing to do.